Helping the mentally or physically ill, the elderly & the poor to fight Council PCNs. Writing about blunders, democracy and profligacy at Barnet Council.

16 March 2012

The Friday Joke 2 - Better services with less money

Real pigs are adorable.

You are probably as sick of hearing this mantra as Mr Mustard is:

"Better services with less money" is officially known as one of the three priority outcomes in the 2010/13 Corporate Plan.

Agilisys Ltd supported by their sub-contractor iMPOWER Consulting Ltd are the council's implementation partner for the One Barnet programme.

You would therefore expect that they would completely buy into the corporate plan and that their fees would go down in the future and that they would provide "Better services with less money"? Surely they must do that as otherwise it would be completely hypocritical of them to want to be treated differently to the many suppliers who will come under pressure to reduce prices and provide a better service.

Mr Mustard expects you have worked out the answer. Here is part of paragraph 6.1 of the contract with them:

Indexing: in accordance with the provisions of the Contract at the commencement date of the contract and on the anniversaries of that date the charges shall be varied by the application of the following formula:

which in plain English means that if the Retail Price Index (excluding mortgage payments) goes up by, say, 4% in a year the hourly rates of Agilisys will also go up by 4%

If you are suffering cuts to your council service or if what you have to pay for that service is rising then get hold of Cllr Thomas, who approved the placement of this contract, and ask him why he let council officers (employees to you and me) sign a contract with the well paid consultants at Agilisys which includes inflationary increases. The normal staff are getting no pay increase this year, again, not even the lowest paid ones. The likes of Pam Wharfe and Craig Cooper who are both on £132,480 p.a. can just about manage without an increase but staff on £15,000 a year need every extra penny.